


Addicted to Misery - Part Three

by CFM (Catatonic)



Series: Addicted to Misery: A Love Letter to the Living Dead and Their Enablers [3]
Category: Pet Sematary - Stephen King
Genre: Death, Family, Gen, Grief, Horror, Post-Canon, bereavement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-25
Updated: 2014-04-25
Packaged: 2018-01-20 09:31:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1505441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catatonic/pseuds/CFM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis continues to battle with self and burns his breakfast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Addicted to Misery - Part Three

Louis wasn't quite sure what he had actually done the evening of Rachel's tragic end, the day he had begun to carry her corpse up that forbidden passage and the day Steve Masterton had apparently jumped ship. Louis' mind was some place else then, when Steve was running after him -- which Louis wouldn't find out until some weeks later. For now he could only remember but the rise and fall of Masterton's distress calls, not the initiative, as Steve snagged up half way through the dead fall, trying to coerce his friend to quit while he still had a life line, while he still had a daughter.  Louis was waiting on his simmering eggs and within the even warmth generating from the stove he vaguely recalled the sensation from the intense graze of heat upon his neck hairs, the flames devouring the Crandall house as though it were simply returning to its own.  It's ironic, he wept bitterly, the idea haunting the annals of his irrevocably fractured soul: to see your bride -- in white. But not the white of a wedding gown. The blank table cover, the burial cloth, hanging down from her person, lifeless, yet with a certain knowledge. . .a sadistic reminder of onerous sacrileges.  Her pumps, pointy, poignant, such feminine imagery. They looked an appalling black against her progressive wanness.  Louis remembers hiding his soiled gloves from the pair of curious bobbies and even his hand at the deck of solitaire played late that night. Waiting for Rachel.  Still there was the question: Had Rachel actually come back to him? Had Rachel come back _for_ him – Why wasn't he dead then? Nothing was clear to Louis.

". . .Darling."  That gravel tone and crackling whisper.  There was a forbearance in this word, the way it was spoken.  Common, calm, almost predatory yet soothing, beautiful. But baleful.  Louis startled himself at how much, even now, that he wanted to meet her lips. . .the skin, blister like.  He was startled as he felt a twang in his back.  The unmistakable plunge of cold, clean, steel.

   
Perhaps he hadn't gone through with the burial after all? Had simply being in the midst of those singularly circular patterns once again, convinced him enough that he couldn't bring himself to soil yet another?  Was their infant son not enough?  What would Gage think of his father -- the real Gage -- surrendering his mother's body to something, someone, unseen? The consequences realized, yet still unproven.  There was no excuse, reiterated Louis, subconsciously, guilty as hell.  What would Ellie, the living, preternaturally perceptive Ellie think, or rather, know.  That night, that endless night followed by that unforgiving sunrise. Perhaps his own voices were, at last, stronger than whatever growls bespoke of the spirits inhabiting those malicious Indian Lands. The Beckoning and awakening tongue of the spitfire Wendigo.

. . .

Sometimes in the quiet mornings he'd pause every now and again and have a look up the staircase; he'd squint, for near the top was dark and he'd try and figure from where those toddling thumps were coming. The dread of this terrible exercise was forthwith, obsessive, constant, and compulsive. But he'd collect himself, realize that the dread wasn't because he feared that his offspring was a demented zombie, no. It was because he feared Gage Creed would appear comin' down those steps quite alive. Never dead at all. He couldn't just kill him again, end it. That pain in his heart would always be there, even if one day it turned out being only dreamt of. He'd have to take a look at his old self. He'd be obligated to raise that child and apply what he learned from being removed from that nightmare. Lou Creed was a very selfish griever, and he toyed with the idea that the house he stood in now, lonely and empty, the smell of burning eggs – carcinogenic – was only a shade of reality. That maybe his own body was, in truth, dead; that the pain and mistakes, the furious gestures, the digging, the dying and the blood shot eyes full of tears were all he ever knew. He had set firmly in his mind that there was no salvaging the rest of his life, that Ellie and travel and change were as good as forgotten. It would seem Louis didn't really wish to be comfortable with himself ever again, or he'd at least take himself for what he really was: A human. A man and a father. A father who had lost a son and wife, and friendships and tried, the only way he saw possible, to make it all fit back into place. . .misshapen as it may come.  Could it be so that there never was a beginning? Were the Creed's days of happiness only an ideal? Nights after coco or a doze in the recliner between shifts.  The eggs had begun to vanish and the skillet itself was being cooked.  The fumes grew toxic before Louis new any better and as he outstretched his hand his vision blurred, Church's feet prints, like a roll design stamp, crossed from one eye to the other.  Louis branded his hand and he dropped the scalding skillet on his foot -- sock-bare -- and the dusty remains of the cats paw path vanished quicker than the yolks.  He limped over to the dining table.  Three vacant seats on all sides of his.  Tears beat down the deeply recessed sockets of Louis' eyes, falling in perfect droplets to his ribbed, cream pullover and his mind was so numb that he could not feel the pain shooting up the right leg he had, only moments before, gingerly placed against the chair.  Louis has considered sessions with therapists. Priests. Of course he'd have to fake names and make up reasons for his troubles. After all, no sane nor sensible doctor would believe that a cracked up patient had really and truly brought his kid back from the grave and fought tangible devils.  A fated life in either Heaven or Hell is decisive, final.  Owning property in Ludlow was a perpetual limbo of the mind.

 


End file.
